Conference bridges are used to facilitate conference calls between two or more conference participants. In operation, multiple calls from multiple communication terminals are terminated at a conference bridge. In simpler conference bridges, the audio signals from each of the communication terminals are mixed together and provided back to each of the communication terminals. In more advanced conference bridges, the audio levels for the audio signals from the different communication devices are monitored and used to identify one or more of the audio signals to provide as an output to the communication devices. In general, the communication terminal or terminals providing the audio signals having the highest level at any given time are selected as the selected communication terminal. The audio signals from the selected communication terminals are mixed together and delivered all of the communication terminals in the conference. The audio signals from the unselected communication terminals are dropped, and thus, are not provided to the communication terminals. As such, only the audio signals provided by the selected communication terminals are presented to the communication terminals in the conference. At any given time, none of the participants will hear any participants other than those using the selected communication terminals. To avoid distractions, the audio signal from a selected communication terminal is generally not provided back to itself.
Since conference bridges generally select the audio signals from the loudest participant to present to other participants, there are many situations where other participants are contending for conference time to no avail. If those participants contending for conference time do not present audio signals at a level higher than the participant using the currently selected communication terminal, they will never be selected as the selected participant. This situation is problematic for soft-spoken participants as well as participants in a conference with a relatively active and loud participant. In many instances, a louder participant may gain conference access and maintain conference access for extended periods of time, even though other participants are contending for conference access. Generally, the other participants have little control over the conference itself, and have little or no influence on prioritizing themselves or others in gaining conference control.
Further, conference calls are being employed in more diverse applications. For instance, on-line gaming groups are employing conference calls to allow multiple garners from different locations to talk with each other during a gaming session. Given the excitement and potential for significant background music or other noise, those garners with the louder group or environment may dominate the conference simply due to the selection process used by the conference bridge hosting the conference call. Again, participants have little control over their conference experience and the louder participants may gain conference access and maintain conferences access for extended periods of time, even though other participants may want or need conference access.
Further, audio conferencing for these gaming environments are often unrealistic relative to the virtual environment of the game. Within a game environment, there are few scenarios where all of the participants should be able to communicate with each other all of the time. Ideally, there would be multiple conferences for participants on individual team and yet another conference for all of the participants, regardless of team affiliation. However, existing conference bridges are unable to support multiple conferences for a participant or group of participants at the same time. Further, the centralized nature of conference bridges makes integrating the gaming controller with the conference bridge practically impossible. Thus, the sounds of the game are generally separated from the sounds of the participants.
Gaming environments as well as traditional conference environments are supporting more and more participants in a given conference. As the number of participants grows, network resources are being taxed. The centralized nature of the conference bridges limits the scalability of the conferencing. To increase the number of participants a conference bridge can support, additional ports and processing resources are added to the existing conference bridge, or a new conference bridge is added.
Accordingly, there is a need for a scalable conferencing mechanism that imparts greater conference control to the individual participants. There is a further need for a conferencing mechanism to support multiple conferences for a given participant or group of participants as well as provide a platform that can be integrated with other systems, such as gaming systems.